I've started and been involved with companies that have collectively raised over $100M in venture capital and have exited for close to $1B in M&A. I've also written for Harvard Business Review, built hundreds of sweet Lego creations, conducted research in nano-technology, and joined National Ski Patrol over a decade ago as the youngest patroller nationwide (even though I patrol on a snowboard). I write about some of these things and more on this blog, on twitter, and on Google. But chatting is better than writing so please drop me a line @ hello@danreich.com.

Home Security Startup Raises $180,000 With Its Own Crowd Funding Platform

Scout raised almost $180,000 with their own crowdfunding campaign in order to improve home security systems.

No one thinks home security is cool or interesting, but when you’ve raised almost $180,000 with a custom made kickstarter-esque website, home security becomes pretty interesting. Lindsay Cohen and the team at Scout realized that home security is a commodity and most of the 17% of the country that has security is dissatisfied with their provider. They thought they could bring security up to date, and to do so they went about building their own organic fundraising campaign to get them off the ground. Lindsay was able to share some insights on how they pulled this off.

Dan Reich: Scout seems like a great product. Why did you decide to raise money without a platform like kickstarter or indiegogo?

Lindsay Cohen: Kickstarter rolled out new rules this year that have disqualified a lot of companies from using their site, including Scout. Too many companies were raising millions of dollars without a solid plan to deliver on their promises. At about the same time those rules hit, Lockitron launched their project and showed that you could be successful with an independent crowdfunding site. We felt well prepared for the campaign and were able to save 5% (about $9000) in fees by not going through a third-party website. That money goes a long way for a startup.

DR: You mentioned that you raised money without a first generation product. What assets did you have when you decided to start this fundraising campaign?

LC: Scout came out of the Sandbox Industries startup foundry in Chicago, IL. We had some initial seed money from Sandbox to do the research and development on the project. We used that money to complete the market research, create our initial prototypes, create our website and pay a small team to execute our rollout plan.

DR: As of this writing, you raised close to $162,000. How did you pull this off?

LC: A huge part of our success has been attributable to our ability to get press coverage. In order to do that, we spent the month prior to our campaign planning who we would contact in the press and how we would pitch the story. Since then, we’ve had a small team here at Scout that has been hustling and executing the Scout plan for the majority of their waking hours over the past three weeks. We do have a small budget for pay-per-click ads and an ad retargeting campaign, but press coverage is far and away the biggest reason we have been able to raise $160,000 to date.

DR: What advice would you give to people that are thinking about doing their own crowd funding project?

LC: Know what you’re getting yourself into, put the time into creating an aggressive rollout plan and then execute your plan every minute that you aren’t sleeping. There is a massive amount of preparation that goes into making something like this happen. We’ve written two blog posts on the topic to help others learn from our experiences. There are pros and cons to our approach. Don’t dismiss Kickstarter, if you qualify, just for the sake of doing it yourself. You can gain a lot of leverage from an existing crowdfunding site with a built-in base of users.

DR: What do you wish you would have done differently?

LC: We wish we would have talked to our early backers of Scout more often and given them more chances to share news about the project. We planned to contact them mid-campaign and during the last week, but we should have started in the first week and touched base every week thereafter. Backers are your best evangelists, their sharing efforts on Facebook and Twitter allows you to reach a whole new group of people that you otherwise would not have reached. Also, we would have incentivized sharing more often. Running referral competitions and motivating people to share can be highly effective.

Dan Reich is a tech entrepreneur and engineer. He has founded and sold multiple companies, the most recent of which was acquired by Buddy Media, which in turn was acquired by Salesforce. Follow him on Twitter at @DanReich.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.